The flight home from Japan was pretty uneventful (aside from the migraine that decided to start trying to kick of in the departure lounge an hour before take off) but thankfully, the movies had switched into February's rotation so I treated myself to Terminator Dark Fate, which was OK, but nothing to shout about. It definitely ranks above all but the first 2 movies and wasn't the absolute shit show it could have been, but nothing noteworthy enough to write a whole post about. Similarly, Kingsman 2: The Golden Circle was something I'd managed to not watch up until this point and was a perfectly serviceable action movie, even if the plot is effectively the same as the first one and the dubious Japanese censorship made for some hilarious replacement swear words, worthy of ITV in the mid 90s. The real star of the show, albeit not for the reasons you might think, was Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
Promising to divert my attention for a full quarter of my flight time, some decent reviews made me curious enough to stick this on and frankly I regretted that decision for nearly the full three hour run time.
The question I have is why literally (figuratively) everyone gives Tarantino some sort of free pass? I will freely admit to not getting it, in much the same vein as not getting why everyone pipes on about David Lynch being a genius (he's not, he's just weird. It's not cool to be weird). Reservoir Dogs wasn't a bad movie and at least it was novel. Pulp Fiction is the only one of his movies I own or will defend because it is brilliant. Jackie Brown was about 3 weeks long, Kill Bill was so long it had to be split in two and was patchy at very best and although Django Unchained was a sterling effort at attempting to break the record for how many times you can slide the n-word into a script without being called out on it, it was also 2 hours of dull followed by 5 minutes of gratuitous and stupidly OTT violence. Spoiler alerts ahead, but that looks like that's his Modus Operandi now; bore the audience into complacency, then jolt them awake with a brick. Except it doesn't quite turn out how he expected.
Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is basically a revisionist What If... comic based loosely on any number of hedonistic 60s/70s TV stars. On the surface, it looks smart; it couldn't look more period accurate unless they actually filmed in the Summer of Love and I'm sure everyone who sat through the pitch gave our man Quentin a hearty round of slaps to the back on how clever he is. Only... it isn't actually that clever. The plot is basically (cursory spoiler alert if you're even remotely interested in assaulting your optic nerves for 180 minutes) what if the Manson Family had gone to the house next door to Sharon Tate and met an aging stuntman whacked off his noggin on acid and his adorable, well trained, murderous-on-command pooch? Everything else in this movie is window dressing designed to throw a very dusty sheet over the actual intentions of the script long enough for you to be surprised at the end. Thing is though, it just makes everything seem utterly pointless.
Sharon and Charlie are almost cameos (Charlie definitely so) in the story of a washed up stage cowboy who happens to keep a flame-thrower in his pool house (for later, obviously) and relies heavily of his similarly out-of-work stunt double to basically keep him from drowning in his own self pity and/or pool. We follow him to auditions, to Italy, though ups and downs and not a single bit actually matters because all of this build up is literally just to drag you to Tate's murder... which eventually doesn't even happen. See what he did there, you gore hounds? Tarantino knows your game. You were looking forward to how spectacular QT was going to make that scene and instead you get a lopsided stand off between tripping Brad Pitt and three hippy losers. It's almost as if he actively wants you to walk away pissed off.
The one thing I will go to bat for Tarantino over is the Bruce Lee scene. He got some very sticky stick over his portrayal of Lee as a blustering show off and braggard which is almost the polar opposite of the real Bruce. Even Bruce's daughters got in on the dog pile and at first glance, they're right. Until you realise that this is a What If... and it isn't supposed to be a life-like Bruce Lee. It's almost an alternate reality where Bruce Lee is a dick, Sharon Tate isn't murdered into mincemeat and her very creepy husband may or may not end up in permanent exile for grooming and committing statutory rape on a 12 year old (allegedly). If you follow that timeline to present day perhaps multiverse Tarantino isn't a hack. Anything is possible, right?
All this not withstanding, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a drag. You can feel the minutes ticking by as another ultimately pointless conversation passes, that signature Tarantino dialogue rendering Academy Award winning actors as mere mouthpieces for QT's unique nasal twang. How the written word even has a twang is a mystery to me but it's there, gnawing away in the background, every character less of an actual character than just a vehicle for that patented Tarantino patter. Honestly, it's just tedious now; at least he had the common decency of including 3 hours of flight time in the body count.
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